An Effective and Simple Adaptive Algorithm for Ship Course Control Systems

This paper is devoted to design an adaptive algorithm for ship course control system. The course control is achieved developing a PID heading controller with adaptive parameters, tuned via an adaptive algorithm. The feature of the proposed approach consists on the usage of a local quadratic criterion which is based on the speed gradient method. The minimization of the proposed local criterion allows to satisfy the requirement of course accuracy and small rudder deviation and, thus, to reduce any loss of the useful ship linear speed. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach also when a liner or nonlinear steering machine model is considered in the ship model. Besides the PID regulator case, the proposed approach is suitable to be applied also for other ship cruise controllers.